The Broken Spine

by Dorothy St. James

  “This is serious.” Tori plowed on. “Unless Tru tells them the truth about what she was doing in the basement vault, which would ruin everything, the police won’t be able to adequately do their job. No one knows we were in the library. And, heck, the killer could have been any one of us.”

  Flossie patted one of the arms of her wheelchair. “Not me.”

  “Oh, really?” Tori shot back. “You might be sitting in that chair, but I know your arms are as strong as an ox’s.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Oxen don’t have arms,” Flossie said.

  “That’s not what I meant. And you know—”

  “Of course none of us killed Duggar.” I put up my hands to stop them from arguing in circles for no reason. “But someone did, and we need to figure out what to do about it. With our combined know-how, we can do this with our eyes closed.” My heart thumped with excitement.

  Flossie winced. “Going after a killer on our own could stir up more trouble than we’re willing to take on.”

  “As you already so aptly pointed out, Flossie, if we don’t do this”—Tori put her arm over my shoulder—“Tru might find herself in a heap of trouble. The police are set on making an arrest, and from the sounds of things, Tru has gotten herself caught in their crosshairs.”

  Part of me agreed with Flossie. Investigating the murder could be dangerous. The police were the professionals. They’d eventually find the true killer. That was their job.

  But another part of me pooh-poohed the idea of putting my fate into someone else’s hands. Wasn’t this the moment I’d dreamed of ever since I’d discovered my first Nancy Drew mystery in the children’s section of the library? I’d been eight years old at the time.

  “We need to do this,” I said. This was my opportunity to prove I wasn’t a mousy, simpering miss jumping at my own shadow. This was my chance to stand up for myself and—as sure as the sun rises in the east—I wasn’t going to run away from it.

  It wasn’t as if I was taking on a murder investigation on my own. My gaze went first to Tori (my friend since forever) and then to Flossie (a constant companion at the library with an encyclopedic mind). With their help, I knew we could accomplish anything.

  “Someone removed the bolts that kept the DVD shelf screwed to the floor,” I told them. “Before my lunch break, I checked every shelving unit in the library. Every single bolt was in place, as one would expect in Mrs. Farnsworth’s library. And yet, the bolts for the shelf that killed Duggar are gone. They weren’t just removed and set aside. They’re gone. Missing. If we find them, I bet we’ll find the killer.”

  Flossie nodded. “That gives us somewhere to start.”

  “It does.” And we could do this. “We were all there when it happened. We might have seen something that we don’t even realize is important. Who is better equipped to solve the crime than we are?”

  “No one!” Tori jumped up from the chair. “Before we start hashing out the details, I need to get more coffee. Can I get y’all anything?” she asked as she hurried toward the counter.

  “Nothing for me until you start selling Cokes,” Flossie yelled after her.

  Chapter Seven

  When I returned to the library after lunch, I felt pleased with the progress Flossie, Tori, and I had made. We’d filled a small blue notebook, now tucked inside my purse, with potential suspects and possible motives.

  Correction: motive. Singular.

  I was convinced that whoever pushed that shelf onto Duggar had done it because he (or she) wanted to stop the library’s modernization plans.

  My lead suspect was still Anne Lowery, although I couldn’t figure out why she’d want to stop the work she’d been doing. Both Flossie and Tori disagreed with including Anne in our list of suspects. For now. They’d come around to my way of thinking after we gathered more information.

  Out of everyone who was at the library, Anne’s behavior was the most suspect. Why hadn’t she come running when the shelf had fallen on Duggar? Why did she go out of her way to convince the police that I was their prime suspect? Did she do it so they wouldn’t look too closely at her actions?

  Sure, all I’d written in the place for potential motives under Anne’s name was a bunch of question marks. She was perhaps the only person in town (save for Duggar and the mayor) who was actually excited about tossing out all of our old hardbound books.

  But I was confident that, with a little digging, I could figure out why Anne killed Duggar. Everyone had their little secrets.

  Even me.

  That last thought made me giggle. Shy Trudell Becket, a woman of mystery? Well, why not? I’d lived so many adventures in the pages of my precious books, I was more than ready to start some in my real life.

  My first assignment, as stressed by both Tori and Flossie, was to find out what Anne had told the police. I wasn’t looking forward to confronting Anne, but my friends were right. I wouldn’t know what I needed to tell the police to explain my behavior yesterday morning until I talked with Anne.

  “A city crew will arrive in an hour to take away the boxes,” Mrs. Farnsworth announced as soon as she’d noticed my return from lunch.

  “Oh.” Her reminder hurt like a sucker punch. I pressed a hand to my chest. “I’d figured that with what had happened yesterday, the police would want us to put the renovation plans on hold.”

  “The mayor is insisting we let nothing delay the renovations.” Mrs. Farnsworth fixed her gaze on the front doors. Was she plotting to do something to stop the men from hauling the boxes to the landfill? If so, I wanted in on it.

  I stepped closer to her and whispered, “So what are we going to do?”

  The question seemed to take her completely by surprise. Her head jerked back slightly. She looked at me the same way Police Chief Fisher had after Anne had apparently accused me of killing Duggar. It was as if she was seeing me in a new light.

  “We don’t do anything,” she said. Her delicate brows furrowed into a deep V. “You need to stay out of the workers’ way while continuing on with your job.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I locked my purse in the bottom drawer of the circulation desk and then headed toward the small maintenance room in the basement to check on Dewey. I hoped he had liked the tuna lunch I’d given him and had known what to do with that litter box.

  As I passed through the empty stacks and the boxes of books that would soon be headed to a trash heap, I felt a strong tug to rescue more of them.

  It would be risky.

  I could be jeopardizing the books we’d already saved.

  But it was something that needed to be done.

  If she wasn’t such a stickler for the rules, Mrs. Farnsworth would want me to rescue those books. I headed straight for the children’s section and toward one particular box containing several timeless adventure books that would please any boy or girl.

  What I found stopped me midstride.

  It was Mayor Goodvale’s backside. An unmistakable sight. No one else in town still wore seersucker suits. He was on his knees on the floor, his head nearly buried in one of the boxes.

  No, not just one of the boxes, he was digging around in the box I wanted. It was a box that was already half-empty from our earlier rescue mission.

  We’d liberated all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books from that box. Those books had topped my list of ones to save. Many of them had been in the library and loved by children since the 1930s. The mysteries, which had been puzzled over by earlier generations, were still being devoured by their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

  What was Mayor Goodvale doing pawing through that box? There were hundreds of boxes in the library we hadn’t had time to touch. Why couldn’t he have picked one of those to riffle through?

  “Can I help you, sir?” I said as neutrally as possible.

  He jerked up in surprise and nearly toppled over as he twisted aro
und to look up at me. “Oh, Miss, um . . . !”

  “Becket,” I supplied.

  “Yes, Becket. You startled me.”

  “I’m sorry.” I linked my hands behind my back. “Can I help you with something?”

  He looked at the box and then back at me. He spread his hands and smiled. “You caught me.”

  “Caught you? What do you mean?”

  “I was looking through here to find a few of Luke’s childhood favorites to take home with me. My boy has just moved back to town.”

  “Yes, I know. He was here with you yesterday.” And he wasn’t a boy. He was nearly thirty years old.

  “Terrible. Terrible. I hated for him to see that. The boy was quite shaken up. Duggar was like an uncle to Luke. We were going to have lunch with him later in the day to discuss my son’s future. Luke recently lost his job due to company cutbacks.” He shook his head. “Duggar said he might have some contacts with the tech industries that he’d been courting. But now . . .” He shook his head again. “It’s all so tragic.”

  “Luke was working in Nevada, wasn’t he?” Everyone had been talking about how the mayor’s son had moved home with nothing more than a small carry-on suitcase.

  The mayor frowned. “He was working with computers or something. He’s told me more than once what his job was about, but he’s much smarter than I am. All that techno mumbo jumbo just goes right over my head.”

  “Mine too.” I gazed lovingly at the boxes of books I wanted to snatch up and run away with. “I’m much more interested in things that I can touch, things I can hold in my hand.”

  “We’re part of a dying breed. The future is digital. Cypress will wither like a diseased vine if we don’t take steps now to move our town into this century.”

  “I don’t see why we can’t both preserve the past, like keeping these books, while also investing in our future.”

  “Funding, my girl. It all comes down to funding. We’re stretching our coffers thin with the hopes of a big payoff on the other side.”

  “If money is such a big issue, perhaps we should slow down just a bit.” I couldn’t stop myself from making a last-minute pitch for the books.

  “It’s too late to slow down now. The money’s been spent. We have to keep pushing and making sure word gets out to the major media outlets about how we’re setting ourselves up to become the Silicon Valley of the South. The new South, that is.”

  It sounded like a campaign speech. He was good at those, which was why he was currently serving his ninth term as mayor.

  “Anyhow, with Luke back in town after such a successful time out in the big world, he’s living with me and Mrs. Goodvale until he regains his bearings and finds work locally. I was hoping to snag a few of those Hardy Boys books he’d loved so much as a teen to help make him feel more at home. He used to always have one checked out of the library and tucked in his backpack.” He tapped the box’s lid. “The label says a few of the Hardy Boys books should be in this box. But they don’t seem to be in here.”

  “Oh.” I flicked my hand as if a few missing books were no big deal. “You know how it is. We might not have been as careful as we should have been in packing up the boxes. All of this is going to the landfill. It’s not as if any of the seagulls that live at the dump will care if a book is in one box or another.”

  He snorted a short, unhappy laugh. “Of course. Shoddy work.”

  His words stung.

  “Please don’t tell Mrs. Farnsworth.” I tried to sound casual, but my voice cracked a bit as I made my plea. “If she knew how we’d rushed through the packing, she’d order me to unpack the boxes and repack them correctly. And she’d expect me to get it done before the city crew arrives in an hour.”

  He closed the box and rose from the floor. “It’ll be our secret. If you happen to find those books, though, could you set them aside?” He brushed imaginary dirt from his pant legs.

  “Consider it already done,” I said.

  “Thank you. Well, I suppose I should go. The paperwork back at town hall waits for no one.” Even as he said this, he still didn’t move. “I can’t believe what happened here yesterday. It feels like a bad dream.”

  “It does,” I agreed.

  The mayor’s frown deepened. “Duggar was a good man. I considered him one of my closest, most trusted friends.”

  “I am sorry, sir. I can’t imagine how hard it was for you. To be here, I mean. When it happened.” My heart raced. This was my chance to do a little sleuthing. “It must have been terrible to hear the crash as the shelf came down.”

  “Hmmm . . . The sound echoes in my mind even now.” He shuddered. “It chills me.”

  “Where were you at the time?” Why hadn’t he come running? Why had he ignored such an awful crash in a usually silent library?

  “I was here, in the children’s section, like I am now. Luke was with me. We were reminiscing about those old books I was looking for just now. Didn’t think much about the sound at the time, not until I heard you screaming for help.”

  I nodded, but what he told me only added to my confusion about the murder.

  By all accounts, Anne had been the closest to the media room. She should have been the one to have found Duggar’s body. The mayor and his son, in the children’s section, should have arrived shortly after. I’d been in the basement, for goodness’ sake. I should have been the last person to arrive on the scene.

  Gracious, no wonder the police were looking at me funny. Nothing about Duggar’s death made a lick of sense.

  Chapter Eight

  I now understood why it was rare to find an amateur sleuth outside the pages of a mystery novel. Clues didn’t come with instructions for what do to with them . . . or even if they meant anything.

  While I felt unprepared for the role I’d undertaken, that didn’t mean I was going to give up. I was, after all, a librarian. I’d spent the past thirteen years tracking down obscure bits of information for patrons. I’d figure out why the mayor and his son had ignored the sound of the shelf being pushed over.

  In the meantime, I knew I needed to go talk to Anne and find out exactly what she’d told the police. I also needed to hear her excuse for not running to the media room when the bookcase fell on Duggar. But the books still trapped in those horrible boxes kept calling out to me. After making sure Mayor Goodvale had indeed left the building, I grabbed the box he’d been looking through. I tossed open the lid and started to pack it full with books from neighboring boxes.

  Books about teen angst, books about cars, and biographies of notable historical figures that rarely get covered in school. Two nights ago, I’d been discerning. I’d thought about the secret library and its limited space and what books would best serve the public. Right now, with the city workers due to arrive at any moment, if the book had a spine—even a broken one—it ended up in my keeper box. When that box was filled, I started on another. And then another.

  I’d started to pack a fourth box when I realized I needed to get the books I’d already set aside to the basement. I managed to pick up two of the boxes stacked one on top of the other. (While books are heavy, librarians are strong.)

  I was almost to the back stairs when I heard someone calling out to me. “Tru, hold up.”

  Clearly, the person asking me to wait had never carried a box filled to the top with books, much less two of them. The muscles in my arms shook a bit as I turned and peered around the boxes in front of my nose.

  “Charlie?” As he had when we first met two nights ago, he looked dangerous. His dark onyx gaze seemed to see right into my soul. “What are you doing here? How did you get in here? The library is closed.”

  “I walked in. The front door wasn’t locked. And no one stopped me.” He was dressed in a dark suit. Too warm for the weather. But he didn’t look the least bit wilted. He hurried over to me and immediately pulled one of the boxes from my
arms. “You’re saving more books?” he whispered. “Let me help.”

  Not one to turn away free muscle, I let him follow me down to the basement. “But why are you here?” I asked.

  “I love old books,” he said.

  “So Tori told me.” I set down the box to open the thick double doors that led into the basement vault. “But why did you come to the library?”

  “Well, she told me that the books were being carted off to a landfill today.” He clicked his tongue. “That’s wrong. Perhaps not as dramatic as the burning of the Library of Alexandria in the third century or the burning of all the Aztec and Mayan manuscripts in the sixteenth century, but still just as wrong. Wrong for this town.”

  “That’s some impressive book knowledge there. Where’d you get it?” I asked.

  “Oh, here and there,” he said, with the same look people usually got when talking about their children. “Books have long been a passion of mine.”

  “Is that why you’re here, then? To help me carry more books down into the basement?” I set the box in the secret bookroom.

  Charlie placed the box he’d carried next to mine. “Well . . . no. That’s not why I’m here. But I will.”

  “Then what are you—?” We had started back up the stairs when I heard a plaintive mew. “Wait a minute. There’s something I need to take care of.”

  Even though I’d told him to wait, he followed me to the maintenance closet where I’d left Dewey. I opened the door a crack. Giving a horrible screech, Dewey jumped out.

  Luckily, I’d been expecting him (or her) to do something like that. I caught the kitty and held on to the squirming beast with an iron grip. Unlike this morning, the skinny stray didn’t try to tear through my arm or growl or hiss. In fact, he seemed happy to see me.

  “I don’t think he likes being locked in that room,” I said.

  “At least the room isn’t dark and damp like most basement closets. He has food, a bed, and a clean litter box,” Charlie said as he peered into the room filled with brooms and mops and cleaners neatly arranged on high shelves. “That sure is an interesting-looking cat you have there. Is that a skull on its head?”